This invention relates generally to production lines, and more particularly to production lines for printed circuit board assemblies.
Conventionally, human resources are used to record information on raw material for a typical factory operation. The information gathered includes verification records, comparison of raw material and/or component type with bills of material, and comparison of inventory records of the raw material and/or components to consumption. These verification tasks are tedious and error-prone. However, this task is essential to provide the traceability of a product and efficient factory operation, which is particularly necessary in the production of medical devices and computer mass storage devices. In regard to products that are composed of more than 100 types of components and/or raw materials, the verification task is usually impossible to perform without extraordinary time and/or expense. There is a need for more efficient verification of component usage in production of finished goods.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional production line 100 or assembly line for printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) 140. PCBAs are used in computers, communications equipment, televisions, and many other products. In a typical PCBA, many electrical components are attached to the top and bottom surfaces of a printed circuit board (PCB).
The production line 100 includes one or more pick-and-place (PandP) machines 110 that place components on a PCB 150. The two forms of PandP machines are xe2x80x9cchip shootersxe2x80x9d that place discrete components on a printed circuit board, and xe2x80x9cIC placersxe2x80x9d that place integrated circuits on a printed circuit board. The PandP machines 110 are automated machines that use a loading list as a guide indicating the placement of components on PCB 150 to produce a PCBA 140. The loading list identifies components and the locations of the components on a particular PCBA design. Each PandP machine 110 has one or more feeders 120, into which a group of components 130 enter the PandP machine 110 for placement on a PCB 150. Commonly, the group of components 130 is grouped on a reel and/or tray in which the components are attached in series, and as the reel and/or tray 130 is consumed by the PandP machine 110 during the placement of components, each component is detached in sequence from the reel and/or tray 130. One component is detached for each location on the PCB 150 that passes through the PandP machine 110.
The production line 100 is also known as an auto placement line (APL) because the production is composed of a number of automated PandP machines 110. The production line 100 is also known as a xe2x80x9cfront-line.xe2x80x9d
Conversion is a process of changing from one revision of a PCBA product to another revision of a PCBA product in a PandP machine 110. During conversion, the loading list from the first revision is replaced with the loading list of the second revision. Conversion requires the operator to manually determine which of the partially-consumed reels and/or trays of the first revision can be reused in the second revision, how the reels and/or trays need to be rearranged, and which reels and/or trays need to be replaced.
Failures on a PCBA occur in one particular component on the PCBA. Often, components in the same production lot, or supplied by the same vendor, or assembled in PCBAs on the same day have similar rates of reliability. Therefore, identifying PCBAs that have components that share a production lot of a vendor assists in performing recalls of PCBAs that have a high probability of failure. In the determination of the quality of PCBAs and in determining recalls of PCBAs, conventional systems, such as conventional production line 100, provide no traceability of all PCBAs that have a component with a high, excessive and/or unacceptable rate of failure. More specifically, a manual quality control group will determine that components from a particular manufacturer, or from a particular reel and/or tray, have a high failure rate. Conventional systems provide no automated ability to trace all PCBAs that share components from the same manufacturer or the same reel and/or tray, making precise recalls of all affected PCBAS, and only the affected PCBAs, practically impossible.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for automated tracing of PCBAs that have components from the same group of components, or come from a manufacturer, that has a high failure rate.
The above-mentioned shortcomings, disadvantages and problems are addressed by the present invention, which will be understood by reading and studying the following specification.
The present invention provides component level and board level traceability to a PCBA manufacturing operation.
In one aspect of the invention, a manufacturing production line includes one or more pick-and-place (PandP) machines that place components on a printed circuit board. Each PandP machine has a number of feeders through which a reel and/or tray of components enter the PandP machine for placement on a PCB. Each reel and/or tray has a bar coded label that uniquely identifies the reel and/or tray. A line client is coupled to an identification (ID) capturer, such as a hand-held bar-code scanner. The bar-code ID on the bar-code label on the reel and/or tray is captured or scanned by the capturer, and transmitted to the line client. The line client communicates the ID to a server. As each PCBA is produced by the production line, a fixed scan station (FSS) captures the ID of each PBCA, such as through a fixed mount bar code scanner, that is coupled to the FSS. A server records the ID of each PCBA during production, and the ID of each group of substantially similar components. Thereafter, the server will use the recorded IDs of the reels and/or trays and PCBAs to trace failed components from one PCBA to the other PCBAs that share a common problem, such as a component, manufacturer, or date of production of the component and/or the PCBA. To trace PCBAs with a common problem, the ID of the PCBA and the failed component are received, after which the IDs of other PCBAs that have a component from the same reel and/or tray as the failed component are determined from the record IDs. The IDs of the other PCBAs are reported to an organization that that has had possession of the other PCBAs, so that the organization may take appropriate action, such as returning the PCBAs to the PCBA manufacturer.
The present invention provides efficient verification of component usage in production of finished goods. More specifically, the present invention enables PCBAs that have components that share a substantial similarity to identified. Identifying the PCBAs is particularly useful when performing recalls of PCBAs that have a high probability of failure.
The present invention describes systems, clients, servers, methods, and computer-readable media of varying scope. In addition to the aspects and advantages of the present invention described in this summary, further aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent by reference to the drawings and by reading the detailed description that follows.